So what’s next, Universe? I don’t hear you so well these days…

Tags

AC joint, faintly drawn shadows, half-life, Happy Hour, Healing, leather couches, life raft, physio, pranayama, rehab, Shiraz, travelling gypsy insanity, Universe, Yoga teacher

Skewers of pain – the size and shape of knitting needles – seared the bones, joints and soft tissues of my shoulder, as I barely succeeded in not swearing at and/or punching my physio in the face. He left the AC joint alone last night and worked some other areas that clearly needed it… and yeah I know, rehab is a perfect opportunity to apply pranayama to the ‘real world’, although it actually isn’t such a peaceful experience when you’re being excruciatingly assaulted like that. Even if it is voluntary and part of the healing process. Yikes!!!

About the only thing I could think to do next was order a Happy Hour $2 glass of tasty Shiraz at the teensy little bar (which looks like it belongs in Europe and not downtown Prahran) with the fabulously quirky music, just half a block down the street. I wandered into its miniscule back room clutching my wine glass and a trashy escapist novel to sit in the booth with the red lighting and leather couches. Really, I just wish I knew what the heck the universe had in store for me other than this.

This… strange half-life I seem to be living. Alive, awake, mostly taking care of myself, socialising with people without really having a lot of close friends (at least not locally). Sometimes working and sometimes not. Almost a yoga teacher, but even that isn’t going to come easily, apparently (see below).

And then, some weird teasingly curious possibility. One that might not even come to pass. Yet there it is, whispering of its own strange potentiality from the other side of the world. Might as well be in another galaxy, really. Of course, it’s not even a definitely maybe situation. Only a possibly maybe one. And I don’t let myself hope (not yet), because it sounds vaguely like something I might really like and I’m superstitious like that. But more on that ONLY if anything actually comes into being beyond the current faintly drawn shadows.

It could mean more adventure, more change, more travelling gypsy insanity (which seems to sit very well with my constitution even if there’s a part of me that really wouldn’t mind settling down. Because another part of me just wriggles and laughs hysterically at the very idea!).

But the truth is, I don’t know! I can’t seem to make proper sense of my life, even though sometimes I feel like I’m heading in the right direction. I feel like I lost the really strong connection to my life’s path many years ago, and now I’m having trouble receiving those memos. Okay, sometimes they’re crystal clear and others… well, I feel like I’m on a life raft in the middle of an ocean and not even a speck of land in sight.

Perhaps that’s just where I’m meant to be right now? I figure it can’t always be like this (because it’s no place to really live a life), but it sure seems like I’ve been on this raft for quite a while now…

Last Saturday I was all excited about my first day as a real live yoga teacher, and about helping other people. People who can’t normally afford yoga classes and who actually, possibly need yoga more than others. Then, we all need yoga in my humble opinion (even if we don’t want it)!

So the night before, I packed the pannier bags of my bike, all full up with yoga mats.

And I get up early to run through my plans for the class. I cycle over and arrive EARLY (which is quite a spectacular thing for me to achieve).

And I expect them to be possibly a little bit late. But the joke is on me because no one arrives.

Despite the phone enquiries I’d received and the promotion of the classes through the social service agency network, NO ONE. Not a soul. Free yoga and no one wants it? Yeah, I’d heard my Guru speak about things like this. All those times when he offered free teachings and no one showed up…

I stayed for a while, going through my class plan again. Just for the practice and because well, perhaps someone would show up really late.

But no.

Thing is, I can’t say I wasn’t warned because I was. I knew this whole scheme of mine was a bit of a gamble. Most of the activities they run happen during the weekdays and in the 9-5 timeframe. But because I work (or plan to be working) those hours, I can’t commit to a daytime weekday gig.

I was warned that without social workers around to encourage them to go, it could be hard for them to manage to leave the house. And I get that. I’ve personally acquired a rather intimate understanding of depression and anxiety and the need to dig in right where you are – safe in your home.

I tried really hard not to feel bad about it. I didn’t take it personally or anything but I’ll admit my disappointment. There I was, finally ready to teach and… nothing. Haha! The universe and it’s games!

Also, I still have no job, although there’s a couple of prospects. But those prospects are taking a while to work through the process… There’s a little bit of temp work but not much, and I’m doing everything I can to save money, which means a bit of an empty social life!

Everything right now seems to be a struggle. Not in a depression, can’t get out of bed kind of way, but I really and truly feel rudderless. And I remember that for a long stretch of time in my life, that’s not how it was for me at all. I recall feeling innately alive and connected to the world and knowing very clearly what I should be doing and when. My intuition – although still doing okay sometimes these days – always used to be red hot. Always.

I really do feel stuck in a rut and I’m not quite sure just yet, how I’m gonna get out…

Good thing I’m going to this wonderful and FULLY SOLD OUT workshop (which I wisely paid for before I was out of a job) on Saturday, huh?

~Svasti

Another good reason to be a yogi…

Tags

AcroYoga, claustrophobia, coffin-like, kirtan, kumbhaka, lasers, Lighthouse Family, magnetic forces, MRI, nanna nap, panic attack, pesky shoulder, physio, Yoga Balance, yogi

All that breath control’s gotta be good for something other than kumbhaka, right? And yes, it is!

It’s fantastic for when you find yourself lying half-naked on a table and wearing one of those flimsy paper gowns, all squished up into a coffin-like machine to get an MRI of one’s left shoulder. Yes indeed folks – that was my Friday night last week!

All on account of that pesky shoulder injury of mine. Hopefully, it’s met its match now and won’t defy diagnosis much longer. I’m grateful for that. But I’m not grateful for the non-rebate-able $280 bill! Apparently I can’t even claim it on my health insurance (and for the US folk, here in Australia we do actually have affordable health insurance that’s usually pretty good at rebating medical services).

So. The MRI is one heck of a weird experience. One of the first questions they ask you before getting started is whether or not you suffer claustrophobia. And hey, even if you don’t, there’s a good chance you’ll dislike being inside an MRI machine while being strapped to the table/bed. It probably isn’t so bad if you’re getting the lower half of your body scanned. But when it’s your head or shoulders, you get ferried head-first into the roundish un-spacious innards of the machine.

And being a yogi helps because you’re instructed to breathe from the diaphragm (long and slow), to make sure the pictures don’t come out blurry. I can only imagine how tough it might be to manage this task if you’re finding the whole thing rather anxiety-inducing!

As for me – well, it’s not been too many months since my last panic attack, so I played it safe and mostly kept my eyes shut, focusing on breathing and repeating my mantra. I was given headphones to wear in a (failed) attempt to block out the really loud noises the machine makes – it sort of sounded like road works with lots of banging. More practically, the headphones allowed the technician to communicate with me while I was entombed (it definitely felt a little tomb-like when I did open my eyes for a few seconds). But I really could’ve done without the bland GOLD FM music streaming through them at the same time.

The interesting part about it was that I could feel the magnetic forces as the scans were in progress. All up I had about six scans and each one took around 6-8 minutes. The sensations were quite varied – everything from heat to prickly-ness, to feeling like lasers were radiating through me. The weirdest was feeling as though my body was being pushed around at a particle level and from the inside. Which was probably all of those big magnets in the MRI machine I guess…

Anyhow, I see my physio this Thursday. Fingers crossed I don’t need surgery. Though I guess if I do… argh! More $$ I don’t have but will have to find because while I can cope for a bit, I don’t really want my repertoire of asana to be limited on a permanent basis if I can help it. And it’d be nice if that pain thing could be taken care of, too. 😉

The rest of the weekend was much more fun! Kirtan and after-kirtan dinner on Saturday night followed by Yoga Balance (a form of AcroYoga) on Sunday…

I had no idea how much energy this kind of thing takes (prompting a late afternoon nanna nap)! I got to be both the base (person on the bottom) and the flier (person balancing on top of another person). No photos from my session though, but maybe next time. It was So Much Fun!!

Woke up yesterday still feeling sleepy and tired, so it was a very mellow start to the week. Perhaps that’s why I had a bit of a musical flashback to just over ten years ago, when I was working as the office manager of a chiropractic/natural health business in Sydney. We used to like playing beautiful and uplifting music and one of the chiropractors who worked there introduced us to the Lighthouse Family.

It’s not so much my musical taste now, but I did LOVE these guys back then. And listening to them yesterday made me feel really great. Enjoy!!

~Svasti

The skinny on Shadow Yoga – part 1

Tags

Acupuncture, Asana, churning, connectedness, massage, orgasm, physio, Prasarita Padottanasana, Prelude, Shadow Yoga, undone, Yoga, Yogasana

True story: If my shoulder could’ve had an orgasm in yoga class tonight, it WOULD’VE!!

Sure, I hear what you’re saying – that’s possibly way too much information for some of you, and certainly for the opening line of a post, right? Okay, okay! Anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself here.

BUT seriously folks, this injured shoulder of mine has not had the sort of release it got this evening in the entire time it’s been injured. I’ve tried all kinds of yoga and stretching of course, massage, acupuncture and physio. Truly, I’ve tried a lot of things. And tonight oh, tonight… I found the asana that makes all the difference – the rehab manoeuvre that brings incredible relief (it is of course, still mangled but this REALLY helps). And riding my bike home, so happy was I that I cried and I screamed and hence the opening line of this post! *giggles*

(The asana in question by the way, is a form of Prasarita Padottanasana where each arm clasps the opposite leg while you hold a deep forward bend. I tried to find a photo of it but couldn’t! It makes sense that it helps though: the shoulder is moving in the opposite direction than it normally does and it’s both intense and very releasing! YAY!)

So anyway, this is my next attempt to talk about Shadow Yoga, in a much less poetic, more straightforward manner. Let’s see how that goes, shall we?

I took the above photo with my mobile phone camera before going into class tonight. Just off the main drag of my lil burgh. Once through the door you head up two flights of an old wooden staircase with a large studio off to the right and a smaller one to the left. Luckily, I mostly get to work in the larger one which faces the street with its incoming tram and traffic noise. Not that it matters in that wide-open wooden floor-boarded room…

I’ve been practicing Shadow Yoga for about seven months now. It’s been a bit of a progression through the introduction course, then the introduction to Preludes, before the actual Preludes themselves (which are before the full-on asana practice!).

You see, Shadow Yoga takes quite a different view of asana than almost any other school I’ve come across. Their view is that most of the asana found in your average yoga class is actually quite advanced, because it requires a lot of knowledge about how to move the body and the joints that just isn’t taught in said average yoga class. And so a Shadow Yoga class doesn’t look much like any asana class you’ve ever been in before, and it is incredibly detailed!

There is pre-asana asana, there’s a lot of focus on breaking movements down in minute detail, placing awareness in the joints and the bones, and a huge focus on Uddiyana Bandha. And yet it is very hard work! Really hard, no matter how much yoga you’ve done before.

There’s a series of forms to learn, kind of like they have in kung fu (although the moves are yoga-ish, not kung fu-ish) and they’re very specific. Nothing it seems, is included in a Shadow Yoga form without purpose. And part of the work is unravelling what everything means to you – letting the forms wash over you and play out in your mind and body.

And how.

A couple of weeks back, I had to work out if I was going to step up into my first Prelude class or stay where I was in the Prelude Introduction series. You might think that given my years of yoga experience, I’d just naturally want to move forward, but… not necessarily. There’s so much to learn!

Because I couldn’t make up my mind, I had quite an involved phone conversation with the teacher I’d been working with up til now (moving forward would also mean a change of teacher – hello attachment issues!). And I confessed that I always find myself feeling excited but also just a little bit terrified before every class.

She asked me why – and to be honest, I hadn’t even tried to answer that one for myself before her question.

So I was surprised to find myself saying this: Because I never know how I’m going to leave each class. Sometimes I want to cry, or throw up, or I feel really energised. And sometimes I just feel completely undone and not sure what to do with myself. I don’t even know how to write about it all properly right now, and I’ve tried…

In response, she said: Well you know that Shadow Yoga is a physical form and that it also works on your organs and your energy/chi. But it ALSO works on your emotional body, and if it’s churning up so much stuff for you like that, then you know the practice is working. So it’s a good thing to feel terrified…

!!DING!! [That’s the sound of lights turning on in my squishy lil brain]

Because of what we talked about (a lot more than just the above snippet), I eventually decided that I’d move into the Prelude class. But also, I’ve found a way to start explaining Shadow Yoga to myself (and any readers of this blog) more succinctly. And while I still find each class incredibly exciting, I’m not quite as terrified any more (even if I still find myself in some state of un-done-ness at the end). It’s all good!

To summarise, and before I dig deeper into my explanation, Shadow Yoga is the nitty gritty of yogasana. It’s a very serious and intense class, and yet we often laugh. We work without yoga mats for better grip and more connectedness and yes… that’s how I’d put it… Shadow Yoga is connectedness like no other kind of asana class I’ve come across to date.

What’s in a shadow anyway? Light falls onto an object, a shadow sits behind the object or form. Hidden. But does that make it insubstantial or unimportant? I think not! A shadow is the underside, that which we don’t normally pay attention to. But if there was no light, there’d be no shadow. So it’s the other side of what’s seen and known. The less obvious, but part of the same.

[Read part 2]

~Svasti

Huzzah! Here’s to flow, change & working things out

Tags

chai, Change, Depression, flow, hooray, huzzah, kirtan, mental health, physio, PTSD, Shadow Yoga, shoulder injury, Twitter, Yoga, yoga for depression, Yoga teacher

Here’s what’s going on right now: more whirring, more change and more opportunities continuing to unfold even as I don’t notice them until they are knocking on my door!

You see, I’ve worked out what was holding me back in the area of yoga teaching. Right now, I don’t want to do it for money! Well, not just yet anyway.

Let me explain – starting with today, even though of course today isn’t the first thing I’d tell you about if I was to write this story in chronological order.

Finally (and it only took me four months), I faxed (and emailed) all the documentation I needed to send in for my membership application to the Yoga Teachers Association of Australia. Hooray! Including payment of my membership fee, and by the time I got home I had an email confirming my membership number!

Double Hooray!! Which means I can now get my public liability/indemnity insurance. Which means I’m all systems go for teaching where ever and whenever.

Also, I went to see my new physio for the first time today. One I found out about via Twitter. After several sessions with my former physio I was getting frustrated when he kept insisting that my shoulder problems were actually just referred neck pain from my messed up neck. And while it’s true that I do have a messed up neck, my shoulder problems are quite specific from a bike accident I had last year (see this post: Crash). As a yogini, I’m probably more familiar with my body than many people and I wasn’t buying his diagnosis.

So I was complaining about that on Twitter, and I got a reply from some guy I’ve never met recommending another physio – someone who looks after all the circus people in Melbourne. Which sounded promising – since circus people and yogis both do relatively weird things with their body.

And yay! He was very competent and definitely thinks there’s something up with my shoulder as opposed to my neck (which has its own issues, but nothing unmanageable). After much prodding and poking, he has a working theory which will require an MRI scan to confirm or deny. And while it may require surgery – we don’t know yet and I’m not about to freak out. Whatever the deal is, I feel like I’m on my way to the correct treatment path and it will be SO GOOD to eventually have full use of my left shoulder back. Which is all good!

After the physio I met up with a new friend – a fellow yoga teacher that I met at Mark Whitwell’s workshop in February. We’ve been discussing the idea of approaching a national organisation here in Melbourne about running some free yoga and meditation classes for those with depression. We both have a history with depression ourselves, and want to give something back to the community. Also, he wanted to borrow a book and ended up borrowing two, and I scored some home-made and very nommy bliss balls!!

My physio appointment finished slightly earlier than I expected, so while I waited for my friend to pick me up, I briefly plonked myself down in a small cafe/wine bar, which didn’t seem to have a name. Bonus – during the week they have a very VERY cheap happy hour, so I downed a lovely glass of red, which set me back all of $2 (I’ll be back!). 😉

ALSO, I’ve just lined up a face to face meeting with another charitable organisation I’ve been in discussions with (via email thus far) about running some free yoga classes. I got the name of the organisation from someone in my kirtan group! This one works with “those who experience mental illness, disability, homelessness, substance abuse issues, addictions, and social and economic hardship”. I will be so happy if I can get some classes going!

There are plenty of yoga classes out there for those who can afford to go. There are even free classes at studios that offer them. But there’s a segment of the community that would probably never make it to a studio yoga class, whether it’s because of socio-economic and/or mental health issues.

And I’ve been in that place where the world seems exceptionally small and painful and feeling nourished and loved seems impossible. Except I was lucky. By the time I developed PTSD and depression, I’d had yoga in my life for many years, and it was instrumental in my recovery. However, there’s a lot of people out there who don’t have yoga, and might never try it. People who’d really, really benefit from it and not just because they want to learn to touch their toes or do a headstand.

I want to bring yoga to those people. And that’s my first order of business as a yoga teacher! Once I worked that out (it came to me in a meditation session on Monday), then suddenly everything started happening.

I’m sure I will eventually start doing some classes that I charge for. But not just yet!

Finally – tomorrow I start a new phase in my Shadow Yoga practice and it’s both exciting and the teensiest bit terrifying. After an awesome conversation on the weekend with the woman whose classes I’ve been attending, I think I might finally be ready to write more about my experiences with this intense and amazing practice.

And that’s my update for now. More to come soon, I just need to find some time (currently in short supply) to sit down and write my heart out for a bit…

~Svasti xo